There’s a heaviness here. It’s perpetuated by the rapid and continual leg bounces, the pensive and stoic postures wrought with worry, and the stares consumed by the thoughts of each loved one’s life in someone else’s hands. The room itself makes every attempt to be inviting. Fake plants, current magazines, moderately comfortable chairs, and closed-captioned televisions are scattered about. The pale yellow walls, a bustling aquarium, and paintings of far away landscapes fight to distract you from the sluggish clock, the ID number your uncle’s life has been reduced to, and the constant comings and goings of surgeons with news. But weaved into every moment that passes is also something else. There’s a feeling of unity here, an understanding that no matter how each of us stumbled into this moment, we’re all doing the same thing. We’re all waiting.
For me waiting has always seemed daunting. I don’t like it. I have no patience for it, and it always seems to result in my wishing away time that I can never get back. The problem is we’re always waiting, for the next opportunity, the next relationship, the next big thing. We wait for things to get better, and we wait for things to get worse. We wait for news. We sit idly by, or we keep ourselves busy in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever situation we’re facing.
There is no doubt that God has been stirring up things in my heart for while now. When I applied for the World Race, I entered into one of the most impactful seasons of waiting in my life to date. God began to show me that what I had been doing wasn’t waiting at all. I was stalling. For years my life had been in a stall pattern. By racing through every next step, I thought I was getting somewhere. But every time without fail, I ended up right back where I started. I never allowed myself to be present for long enough to listen to what God was saying, long enough to see the opportunity waiting had in store.
For the next six weeks, I want to embrace all that this season of waiting has to teach me. I want to lean into my dependence on God for every detail I don’t have, every date I don’t know, and every outcome I’m unsure of. I don’t want a single moment to pass me by without fully experiencing everything the one before has to offer. I want to be more about God’s plan than my own.
As I sit in a room where waiting is the only thing on the agenda, the reasons for waiting become clearer. Waiting wasn’t keeping me from everything I wanted. Instead, it was a road map for how to get there. I just had to sit in it long enough to discover how to read it. Waiting is always needed. It’s a lesson learned, a dependence reinforced, and a time to focus on where we are instead of resenting where we aren’t. Waiting is a blessing.
After all, God’s been waiting on me all this time.
